36 Hours Later
by Milena D
Summary: Fic #2345071 dealing with the end of Motel California, specifically how Stiles might deal with finding out Derek is alive after spending a day and a half in his own personal hell. Spoiler alert: not well.


This was written out of a desperate need to just express my frustration with the state of affairs from the point of view of the characters. It may come across slightly as Derek-bashing though that's not my intent, and interestingly, as I was writing it, I kept flashing back to how Derek keeps yelling at Scott when really he's yelling at himself. I really like that style, I've found.

**Note**: there is Derek/Jennifer but it's canon and treated neutrally (not bashing but definitely not praising).

* * *

Some 36 hours after the fight he wasn't invited to, there's a car parked outside Derek's loft but it's not the Camaro or the new van, and Stiles doesn't know what that means but the good money's on something bad. So when he parks the Jeep, he takes a moment to simply sit and breathe. He figures he _should_ take a moment before he has to come to terms with the fact that his Day and Night from Hell have extended into a Day and Night and Day again.

Stiles and the others had elected to take the day off from school upon their return, most of them citing food poisoning from the diner near the motel. It was easy enough for Finstock to believe and relay to the school, given that all four werewolves looked shaky and sick, even after hours on the road with dubiously fresh air. Allison's father had pulled her out himself, Lydia had pulled _herself_ out, and Stiles...well Stiles was technically skipping but he'd instituted a near-death policy which allowed him to feel entitled to a day off.

A working day off, anyway.

With the information from Ethan that Derek might still be alive, a low-key manhunt had begun to find him. Scott had elected to check out Deaton's clinic despite Stiles's advice that he go home and watch cartoons until some of the weight on his shoulders slipped away. In fact, Scott _had_ gone home but only to see his mother with his own eyes. He hadn't had the nerve to call her from the bus, seemed hesitant to call her at all, but one good hug with his mother had acted as the final piece he'd needed to recover his shattered faith. He'd then taken charge of Isaac, placed him on the couch with a blanket and his unwatched cartoons, and made sure his mom would be there to look over him for a while. And then he was out the door again, only to find Boyd on his front step. They'd dropped him off at home but he'd apparently stood on his own porch for a half hour, unable to go inside, before giving up and walking away. Scott had gotten a second blanket for the big chair before finally leaving for Deaton's.

As for the humans, Allison was going to recon the abandoned mall as soon as she could slip away from her father's overprotective (though justifiably so) gaze. She'd then meet up with Scott to search the woods. And Stiles and Lydia were supposed to investigate Derek's loft, which is why Stiles was there alone. Lydia rightfully refused to voluntarily enter any place Peter was likely to be. Instead, she'd be searching hospitals and police records for arrests, assaults or deaths. Scott and Stiles, respectively, could have gotten that information more quickly and more easily but neither were going to take away her chance to contribute. They all knew too well what it felt like not to be able to do anything.

Eventually, someone would also have to check the old Hale house, either for Derek or an unmarked grave surrounded by wolfsbane but for now, Stiles had a stranger's car where there should be no car at all.

Deeming his grace period over, Stiles kills the engine and gets out to investigate. He doesn't recognize the car, though he supposes that if Peter had been able to get an apartment despite being so very dead, he probably would have been able to rent or buy a car. Or maybe _he's_the one who took the Camaro and left Derek with that soccer mom minivan. If he did, that's just a step too far on the side of evil in Stiles's opinion. Asshole. Cora's too young to have a license or rent a car and Stiles can't think of anyone else Derek might know who wasn't on the bus with them. Well, he can, but she's dead. Although she would have loved that shade of red.

There's a bloody palm print on the driver's door window, which is somewhat weird - and what has his life become that something like that only ranks as "somewhat weird" now? The inside of the car doesn't give him any clues, and he's too paranoid of alarms to check to see if the door is unlocked. Flicking his eyes to the large loft windows above him, he finally makes his way up the stairs, vowing to stock the Jeep with some kind of weaponry if he walks away from this because walking alone and unarmed into an unknown but probably dangerous situation is not how days off should be spent. He creeps up the metal stairs, trying his hardest to make sure the soles of his shoes come down vertically, with no slide to cause a squeak. It's a long trek up the outside staircase, but the elevator would be a signed invitation to his massacring. He holds his breath most of the way up in an added effort to go undetected. The fact that he sat in a loudly running Jeep for three or so minutes is immaterial. As is the fact that if the people inside are werewolves, they'll hear his pounding heart the entire way up. It doesn't matter. He can't reason with instinct. If he could, _he_ would have been at home, wrapped in a blanket, watching cartoons and leeching comfort off his dad while desperately trying to forgot he could have been part of a double suicide.

When he's at the loft door, he gingerly steps to the side to flatten himself against the wall, and breathes twice, softly but deeply, before holding his breath again to listen.

He can't hear anything.

No moving, no talking, no threatening or fighting. Just nothing.

He waits probably another full minute against the wall. The door's heavy creaking will give him up but the silence is now deafening and if he doesn't move soon, he's going to have to break it by screaming, so he steps in front of the door, yanks down on the handle (it's not locked) and pushes it open with enough strength to make it clatter against the interior wall.

Inside, there is more silence, a pair of heels and, conveniently, a crowbar. Feeling unnervingly like he's the protagonist in a video game, he picks up the crowbar, dulls the nervous fluttering in his stomach, and quickly runs to the only real dividing wall in the open-concept loft. He wants to call out for Derek but he's not that stupid. He also wants to triple check that his phone is on silent but that feels like a trap. Like something will pounce as soon as he's the slightest bit distracted.

He's just about to leave his pseudo-hiding place and search the rest of the apartment when he hears a familiar voice call out, "It's okay."

Stiles is surprised by how good his sigh of relief feels, how quickly his muscles and posture relax. He hadn't realized how buried his reaction to the news of Derek's death had been until he could finally breathe a little looser.

But when he rounds the corner into the open, he comes upon a woman swinging a rebar towards his head. He only just manages to swing himself back - and he's pretty sure he wrenches a muscle in his back in the process - and then swings his own crowbar back up. Just before his strike hits, he processes the scared face of the woman attacking him and thanks his lucky stars that he only hits her rebar, causing it to sail out of her hands and clatter loudly to the floor.

"What the hell?" He yells, for lack of anything better. His heart can't decide if it's pounding out of fear of having been attacked or fear of nearly striking his teacher, so it's just beating a staccato that makes him wonder if his dad will find him dead from a heart attack instead of a mauling like he'd come to imagine.

"Stiles?" Ms. Blake says, eyes just as wide and panicked as his must look. Possibly more since assaulting a student is a pretty big, national-news kind of thing.

"Ms. Blake." He replies. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Shouldn't you be in school?" She asks, sheer relief and lingering fear causing the words to come out accusingly.

"Shouldn't you?" He returns in the very same manner.

"I took the day off."

"Hey, me too." Stiles replies with mock cheer. "Will the coincidences never cease? Speaking of coincidences, what are you doing here?"

At that, her face loses any semblance of shock and becomes guarded, which is about the same time Stiles realizes that his 11th Grade English teacher is in the loft of the alpha werewolf they thought was dead and gone.

With one eye on Ms. Blake, Stiles calls out, "Derek?" And then rushes out in the vicinity of where he heard Derek's voice come from. He hears the soft patter of Ms. Blake's feet following him until they reach the open area, and he sees a bloody but healed Derek sitting - apparently naked but for the sheets - on the edge of his bed.

Stiles has never seen him in that bed before. None of them have. They had come to assume he'd bought it for show, as the one pristine item a responsible adult should own, just never used. Stiles's personal theory was that Derek slept on a pile of cement blocks, which would account for his assholish ways.

But apparently the bed _was_ being put to use. Go figure. Good on him for being the first to see it. Stiles: mystery solver extraordinaire. Was Ms. Blake naked? Surely he would have noticed if she was naked. A glance back tells him she's not naked. She's not dressed, per se, wearing only an overly large shirt, but she's not naked.

"Well then." Stiles says. "You're looking..." He wants to say "virile" but it would be coming from a place of white-hot rage he's only recently discovered he was capable of. The kind of rage that if you feed or pay any attention to will come spewing out in a torrent of hatred, leaving little behind to salvage when it's done. So he settles on, "...better than expected."

"It's fine, Jennifer," Derek repeats, and Stiles understands numbly that the previous reassurance was for Ms. Blake, not him.

_Jennifer_ relaxes minutely, though she doesn't move to join Derek on the bed. At least one of them has some sense, some decorum. She just hovers off to the side, nearly midway between them.

"So you're alive." Stiles says with some bite because Derek still hasn't addressed him and he's had about 36 hours too many of being ignored. "Were you ever even hurt?"

"He was! Of course he was." Ms. Blake says, holding out her hands, where Stiles can see some remains of dried blood. Stiles has only just noticed that some of the blood was black before she retracts her hands awkwardly.

"It's a bitch to wash off, isn't it?" He commiserates, giving her a little nod so she doesn't feel like she's divulged some epic secret she wasn't meant to. "Worse when it's black. It's like the insult to the injury of being embroiled in werewolf drama. You don't wanna know how many washes it took the Jeep's seats before his blood would come out. Although, assuming you drove him here, you'll be finding out soon enough."

"What are you doing here?" Derek asks, and something jagged burrows itself into that pressurized ball of rage, threatening to cleave it open. Stiles wants to hurt him suddenly, very badly. He thinks of Scott slowly dying on the bus. He thinks of his best friend bleeding to death through sheer guilt and grief on the dirty floor of a bathroom while his ex-girlfriend sews him back up. He thinks of his brother, crying in a pool of gasoline. He thinks of how close he came to being burned to death with him.

"Ethan said you might still be alive. We're scouring the city for you. Or were. I suppose I should let them know we can call it off. Seems like the responsible thing to do, doesn't it?" He's disappointed in how tame his biting tone sounds.

"We?" Ms. Blake asks hesitantly. Derek looks away, his face blank.

"We." Stiles repeats. "Did you not fill her in on the posse? What we crazy kids get up to? For that matter, what are _you two_ getting up to? Because I have a hell of a hard time believing yet another stranger has come walking into our town for unfinished business so..."

His gaze passes deliberately from the bed to Derek's state of undress and then to Ms. Blake's and let's some of the darkness come over him.

"Is this your recruitment pitch? I only ask because I've heard Erica's was similar. Trying to replace her so quickly?" There we go. Much better bite in this one.

Derek lets out a sudden growl and flashes his eyes as warning. It's nothing new to him - though he still swallows reflexively - but Ms. Blake actually takes a step back in fear.

"So what's your damage, huh?" He hears himself ask her, as though they were in line at the grocery store and comparing carts. "I mean, you must be _broken_ somehow. That's the one requirement of this little circus. Only the broken and traumatize may be admitted. Daddy issues? Mommy issues? Genocidal psychopath or borderline pedophile issues? We've got 'em all. I should warn you though, the benefits to this little package only include more trauma. Not exactly a smart deal."

"Stiles." Derek grounds out in warning as he reaches for his pants.

"No, no, you're the one who's big on informed consent, aren't you? Can't be like crazy uncle Peter. So inform her. Inform her what it means to get into this life. Tell her how you'll be asking her to put her life on the line, to risk yourself, your friends, your family time and again because _you've_ brought everything evil to our doorstep." He'd regret every single one of these words for days to come but now he just needed to strike until he saw blood. "Inform her that it's not a two-way street. Inform her that you'll be calling on her at all hours of the night, but when she needs you, she's fucked."

"That's not true." Derek finally says, anger seeping into his face. He moves to stand but it takes him a bit of effort. Good.

"Oh but it is. It really is. And you know how I know that? Because I had to try to lift a safe off Boyd's chest when he tried to drown himself in a tub last night. And I had to coax a terrified Isaac out from under the bed when he thought his dad was still attacking him. And because life is great, I actually had to burn his face with a lit flare to get him to realize he wasn't really being hurt anymore. Oh, and I had to step into a pool of gasoline to keep Scott from self-immolating because he was _convinced_ that you were dead and that it was his fault. He was so torn up with guilt that he _needed_ to die, to just not exist anymore."

By the contrasting silence following his speech, and the heaving of his chest, Stiles realizes he'd been shouting. He also notes Ms. Blake's more agitated hovering and curses himself for outing his classmates to her.

"So maybe instead of roping yet another innocent bystander into this clusterfuck of a life, you could think about taking care of what responsibilities you already have."

"This wasn't about that." Derek shakes his head.

"Oh?"

"This wasn't about...it wasn't pack. I'm not-"

"Trying to recruit?" Stiles nods. "No, good, better to bring a _human_ into this situation and keep her squishy and killable. Better to attach someone to you who can't defend themselves against werewolves, let alone _alpha_ werewolves. Best not to offer her the bite at all. I mean, it's not like the alphas have attacked or targeted us at all, right?"

Derek's shoulders were still drawn tight, but there was a resolve to him now. One that grew when he snuck a glance at Ms. Blake for support.

"I didn't mean for... I needed... I'm allowed to have a night - _one_ _night_ - for myself." Derek starts haltingly, as if he's trying to wrap his head around the words he's speaking.

"Yeah, I guess you are." Stiles says, nodding. Derek looks surprised and suspicious. "I mean, that's fair. You've been through so much not only in your life but in the last year. You deserve a break. You deserve to have good things." And he finds, as he speaks the words, that he means them from the very depths of his heart. "But then...when's my night?"

Derek's brow furrows.

"_When's_ _my night_? When do I get to stop feeling like I'm going to die if I step outside my house, but that if I don't, the people I care about will be torn to shreds? When do I get to start sleeping again, for that matter? When do I get to breathe again? To get comfort? Is that what you want to call it? Because I was on my way to comfort-ville not too long ago. And then she was murdered. On her 17th birthday. She was murdered and I was the last one to see her alive."

There's a sympathetic breath from Ms. Blake and he appreciates it but doesn't acknowledge it.

"That was my last night off." Stiles continues. "I couldn't save her. Even with werewolf strength and speed I probably couldn't have saved her. I couldn't save Erica, or even Boyd that night. I couldn't- " Ms. Blake takes a step towards him - she probably didn't even mean to, it's just her nature - but Stiles rolls his shoulder as though he's shaking a hand off it. When he speaks again, his voice is steely. "You didn't even need all that supernatural power last night, all you had to do was pick up the goddamn phone."

For that, Derek has no words, it seems. It's okay, because Stiles has plenty more.

"You didn't even have to do it yourself. You could have gone to Deaton's and he would have called, you could have gone to the ER where a certain nurse we know would have called us." Stiles rings his hands around the crowbar he's still clutching, before pointing it in Ms. Blake's direction. "Did she not have a phone? Out of all the knights in shining armour, you fell upon the one single human being who doesn't have a cell phone?"

"I thought it would be better not to let anyone know." Ms. Blake says, who seems grateful if trepidatious to be included.

Stiles recoils like she'd made a move to strike him.

"_Why?_" He yells. "Why would that even be an idea to consider?"

"Because!" She returns, straightening her stance. "Because it's usually a good idea to let the villains think they've killed you if you manage to survive. It gives you time to regroup, or heal, which he clearly needed to do."

"And you know that from what?" Stiles says. "Your extensive years as a vampire slayer in Sunnydale?" When her face reddens and she looks away, he's actually disappointed. "Yeah, violence and death hurts a lot more in real life. Trust me, I have a lot of experience in both."

"And for that matter," he throws to Derek, "so do you. You've grown up in this, and yet you still went along with this? For what possible reason? How did you justify that to yourself? Did you think Deucalion tapped our phones? Or that we'd been having slumber parties with the twins and we'd spill the beans as soon as we saw them? Who the fuck do you think you're talking to, Derek?"

"A teenage kid." Derek finally yells back. "A stupid kid who doesn't know how to shave yet, let alone how to handle an alpha pack."

And that just about kills him. He would expect this kind of talk directed at Scott - sweet, optimistic Scott who still thinks there's good in the world. But, for some reason, he thought he and Derek understood one another. He thought... well, he thought wrong, clearly, because this was never a situation he thought he'd be finding himself in. Yelling at Derek over his alpha-ing, sure. With his girlfriend acting as referee? Not so much. Not after everything they've been through. Not after saving his life (and vice versa), not after planning his rescue missions. Not after everything.

Well, fuck him.

"Yeah, about as young as Boyd, and Isaac, and Erica actually." He returns calmly. "You didn't seem to have any problems shackling them to you when it suited you."

"Wait, Isaac Lahey and Vernon Boyd? That's who we're talking about?" Ms. Blake interrupts. "They're _teenagers_. They're teenagers in my classes. And Stiles, so are you. Derek's right, you shouldn't be having anything to do with this." She exclaims, before looking unsure. "I mean, unless...are you a werewolf too?"

"Not me, no." He answers shortly. "And age of majority has a tendency to be waived after two or more attempts on your life, and/or three instances of witnessing gruesome deaths. Whichever comes first, I suppose."

She looks like she wants to argue the point, wants to protect him and anyone else he'll name. He admires her for it. Few people learn the supernatural is real and instead of freaking out, immediately try to help. But he came here for a reason. And that reason was alive and shacking up with his English teacher.

"You know what, Derek? Just stay in your little hole of despair if you want to, okay?" He says, already getting out his phone in preparation to text everyone. "Stay here, bury your head, have yourself a good night. But do us all a favour? The next time me or mine arrange a meeting, stay the fuck out of it. You can't just show up, get everyone hurt and then disappear until it's convenient for you. That's not okay. That's so far removed from okay that the next worst option for being okay would be to confine myself to a room with Peter and Gerard. That would be better for me than the last 36 hours have been."

He means to turn away and walk out the door right then and there, it would make an amazing exit, and he actually does make it a few steps, but Ms. Blake is still there. She's moving back towards Derek now and knowing him, she's going to leave eventually with exactly 8% of the knowledge she should have on the situation.

"Take it from me, Ms. Blake." He says. "The world of supernatural beings and good versus evil and all of that, is much better enjoyed in literature. Living it will only bring you pain, and heartache and most likely, death."

She raises her chin, and puts a hand on Derek's shoulder, and he doesn't know why but his stomach churns.

"You're already involved," he continues, "but at least you get to make the choice for yourself, of whether you want to stay that way or not. Most of us don't have that luxury."

"But you said you weren't..."

"I'm not a werewolf." He agrees. "But it's my fault that someone else is. I can't walk away from that."

He leaves without another word, already drawing up his mass text to the group reading: **Derek's alive and an asshole. He's at the loft.** He could warn the others but he isn't quite sure what he'd be warning them about.

It will take Stiles three days - until he's back into his routine and no one is on the immediate verge of dying - to realize that he was more upset rattled leaving Derek's loft than he was creeping up the stairs to his potential doom.

It will take him a full week and a half to find his father at home and out of uniform but wearing his Sheriff's face. As it so happens, Ms. Blake really is sincerely concerned about her students' welfare and, as it turns out, she does own a phone.

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Thanks for reading!


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